


neville discovers conspiracies and the meaning of life

by neville



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Bullying Mention, Care of Magical Creatures, Fluff, Friendship, Friendship/Love, GOD what iS THIS, M/M, Magical Realism, Modern AU, how do i even tag this what is this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 20:54:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13443204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neville/pseuds/neville
Summary: Neville moves town; he expects to be bullied, and for things to go wrong, and yet somehow, they don't.For the most part.





	neville discovers conspiracies and the meaning of life

Neville’s never been fond of trains, but taking one on his own is somehow even worse: he can’t find his seat, forgets that he has to pay money for food, compulsively checks his phone to make sure that they definitely aren’t about to approach his stop even though he knows he’s not due to arrive for another four hours or so, and drops his suitcase on his foot as he’s trying to heft it out with far too much desperation considering it’s another twenty minutes before the train even pulls into the station. He  _ really _ wishes his Gran didn’t think he was this mature; sometimes he thinks he’s going to hit his twenties and have bills to pay and somehow forget them all, because it sure is in his nature. 

He embarks with a gulp, hefting his slightly too small suitcase behind him, bulging awkwardly at the seams. He can see the town in the distance, and he double-checks his printed-out map, complete with written directions and arrows following the winding labyrinth of roads that make up Pinetree. It seems nice, he thinks: the sun is beating down on him, the beginning of summer showing its happy face, and he can even see the river that runs through the town. It’s like something from a quaint British TV show, he thinks, and with the onset determination that he’s sure he can’t get lost because he has everything written down, he sets off.

(He gets lost.)

It’s not intentional, but Neville’s directionless, and he doesn’t know how many feet he’s meant to walk before he turns, and the street signs are too high on the French balconies for him to read feasibly, so he doesn’t even know if he  _ has _ made it to Birch Street and simply failed to recognise it from the glimpses he’s seen on the Internet, and his arm is starting to hurt from dragging his suitcase, and the seams are starting to look precariously taut. Even the seams on his jeans suddenly seem tight.

“I’m sorry, are you lost?”

Neville wonders if he’s accidentally gotten off in the wrong country, and he turns to the owner of the beautifully British accent: it’s a teenage boy, about the same age as him (Neville’s seventeen), all gangly with too-long limbs and radiating that air of just waiting for the day where suddenly he’ll burst and become some kind of well-proportioned man. He’s wearing a denim button-down and flecked black trousers with dark brown boots, with a slightly wild mop of hair that falls in a sort-of fringe in his face, and there’s a gentle curiosity to his features that soothes Neville’s terrified heart: he doesn’t look like he’s about to pull some kind of practical joke on Neville or beat him up, and so Neville nods.

“Yeah, I’m - uh - meant to be moving in at Birch Street, but I’m not really sure where I am,” he says shyly, rubbing the back of his neck. “I have a map, but it’s not really helping…”

“I’ll take you to Birch Street,” the boy says with a smile, gesturing with his head before setting off, walking with a peculiarly rambling jaunt. “This place takes a little bit of getting used to, but it’s okay after that. You must be the new boy. I heard about you in school; people have been talking about you.”

“What kind of things have they been saying?” Neville asks nervously, shifting the strap of his backpack.

“Just trying to predict what you’re going to be like. Fred and George have ten-to-one odds that you’re going to be a thug, but I for one am rather glad to see that they’re wrong,” the boy grins, pausing to jut out a hand, which Neville shakes with some surprise; he’s never really had anyone shake his hand before - nobody ever seems to have deemed him important enough. “I’m Newt. British, as I’m sure you can hear. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Neville.”

“Birch Street is just here. You really weren’t that far - and there’s a nice coffee shop a little further up that does good donuts, if you’re interested. We could always go together. I could introduce you to my friend, Credence. I think you’ll like him.” Newt pauses just outside the apartment that Neville  _ does _ recognise from the potato quality pictures, running a hand through his hair and setting some of it on end.

“Credence?” Neville frowns.

“It’s Puritan,” Newt shrugs. “At least it’s not Praise-God. Or If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned.” He then proceeds to pull off a strange smile that seems to Neville to be a repository of trouble, but trouble in the kind of trouble that stealing a cat from an abusive household trouble is trouble, and though Neville doesn’t enjoy getting into  _ any _ sorts of trouble, he has a feeling that he could easily fall down a rabbit hole with Newt.

He tries to hope that he won’t, but it’s slightly difficult.

-

Neville had his head flushed down the toilet multiple times in his last school, and so immediately deems that this one is better as his head remains firmly away from the lavatories. He doesn’t find Newt until lunch-time, but people aren’t necessarily  _ mean _ to him and actually bother to inquire into his previous life instead of firing balls of scrunched-up paper at him; he makes a friend in a girl with a bob called Tina who’s steadfastly determined to get good grades and writes slightly too many pages of notes in class as a result.

And, of course, it turns out that she’s Newt’s friend. Newt has more friends than he let on to Neville, if he let on at all: his group of friends take up an entire table in the cafeteria, and it’s comprised of himself, the Puritan, Tina, her slightly younger sister who is wearing the best outfit Neville has ever been graced to see, a round boy called Jacob who seems to be a dispenser of baked goods, a gum-chewing punk with eyebrows noticeable from across the room, and a neurotic-looking boy who’s wearing a tie and looks as if his own existence stresses him out. Neville is welcomed easily, taking a place in between Newt and Neuroticism. (It sounds slightly to him like a Jane Austen novel, and Neville stifles a laugh at his own internal joke.)

The banter across the table comes easy, and Neville joins it effortlessly: nobody stops to stare at him as if to question his presence at the table, and he even earns a few laughs now and then, managing to capture half the table’s attention as he retells the story of how he got detention for trying to replicate a scene from Matilda.

Bizarrely, Neville feels like he belongs. It’s something he’s so unused to that it almost startles him, and as Newt and Credence walk him back to Birch Street (they prompt him for directions every now and then, and he fails every time; he doesn’t mind, though), he thinks he might cry.

“So,” Newt says at Neville’s door, pinging his navy blue suspender. “Would you like to go for coffee and donuts this weekend?”

-

Newt’s right: the donuts  _ are _ good, sugary and filling. They also give Neville what feels like an immediate food baby, and for a few moments he makes a mental apology to every woman who has ever been pregnant, because the stretch of his stomach to accommodate the volume of donuts he has just consumed isn’t particularly comfortable, and he can’t imagine it going on for nine months; when he vocalises this to Newt, he bursts into that half-reserved English laughter and jostles Credence’s shoulder, who stifles his own laugh, a thing that Neville’s never even heard yet. Credence is quiet, painfully so, but there’s something about his smile and the sound that escapes of his laugh that’s  _ addictive _ .

“You were talking about Matilda on Monday,” Newt says as he sips his tea (Earl Grey; he’s so typically British that Neville wonders if he’s wandered out of the television). “Have you read the book?”

“Oh, yeah. It was my favourite book, and it kind of still is, if that’s not stupid,” Neville replies, flushing - he doesn’t see anything stupid about it, because he loves Roald Dahl, but his Gran and everyone else seem to expect him to have  _ moved up _ , to have a higher order level of favourites, but Neville just likes to take it easy, to twist his tongue over a Dr Seuss or explore the world of the fantastical with Roald Dahl. There’s time for classics, sure, but his choice will always be what makes him the happiest.

“There’s nothing stupid about it,” Newt shrugs, and there’s something in the nonchalance of his tone that suggests to Neville that he’s not just trying to be polite: Newt really doesn’t think there’s anything stupid about Neville being seventeen and still leafing his way through Matilda with childlike glee - in fact, it almost sounds like Newt would probably join him, or at least watch the film with him and play  _ Send Me On My Way _ on Pancake Day. “Have you seen Stranger Things?” Neville nods, and is about to start gushing when Newt continues. “Okay, so - don’t you think that Matilda and Eleven are some of the most incredible female characters ever?” Neville nods emphatically. “And that their powers are cool?” There’s something very wrong with the sound of Newt’s accent reaching around the word  _ cool _ , but Neville ignores it and continues to nod like a bobblehead figure. “Well, what if I told you that Credence and I both have powers?”

Neville stops.

Newt has just punched him in the gut. (Metaphorically.)

How could he have thought that people weren’t going to make fun of him? How could he have ever made the mistake of trusting people, of thinking that people liked him? God, he’s an  _ idiot _ . Newt was just too smart, playing the long con that nobody at Neville’s previous school ever bothered to, because kicking him in the shin just worked so well, too.

Neville shakes his head, and reaches for the armrest of his chair when Credence leans forward suddenly, a sharp movement in contrast to his usual self: Credence is reserved, like he’s been compressed or something, all his sharp edges blurred. “He’s not lying,” Credence says loudly, which for him is a tone just above a whisper, but it’s enough for Neville to pause from his path outward and downwards into a spiral of tears and glance back up. “Look.” Credence sits back for a moment, his back slumping as he looks to his cup of hot chocolate on the table: and, just like that, and as if it’s a moment plucked straight from between the pages of a Roald Dahl novel, the cup starts to move, sliding across the table until it lands in his hand. Credence giggles, softly, as if his own powers still surprise him with their novelty. Neville’s heart feels like it’s being tugged, because Credence is cute, warm; how could he be deceiving him? And yet Neville’s seen so much deception.

“No,” says Neville. “That could be - magic. Like, sleight of hand.” He turns to Newt. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“We just want to be honest with you, Neville.” Newt sighs, exasperated, and rubs the back of his neck, watching as Credence sips his hot chocolate. “And my powers aren’t like his. I wouldn’t like to use them on you.”

“Show me,” Neville says, stubbornly, because if Newt’s trying to feign  _ honesty _ , then Neville won’t be happy until he’s got concrete proof that he’s not about to be stabbed in the back, humiliated, have his pants pulled down in front of an audience of everyone in school. (It’s not happened, but it’s such a common recurring dream that he’s almost not sure that it  _ didn’t _ happen.)

Newt leans forwards, and for the briefest of moments uncharacteristically locks eyes with Neville before shyly glancing away. “Your middle name is Frank, after your father. Your parents both died in a car crash when you were little and your Gran has been forcing you to live in their legacy ever since. You feel as if you’ll never be as good as they were, and you’ve been the target of frequent and almost neverending bullying. You moved away after you tried to stand up to a bully and were beaten up badly; your Gran is having to take a job here because you’ve used up all your parents’ money moving here and away, but you were desperate and couldn’t stay. You think that Credence and I are trying to make fun of you, and you feel incredibly betrayed by this because you thought I was cute, even though you also decided that you had no chance with me because I have too many friends and they’re all too nice and that I must, of course, be in love with either Tina or Queenie.”

Neville doesn’t think he can stay anymore, and holes himself up in his room for the rest of the day, drowning out the world with the Happy Mondays: he hears Newt trying to speak to his Gran, but she’s fierce. It’s one of the things he loves about her.

He watches Newt and Credence tumble along the street together, and feels lost.

Because Newt wasn’t wrong. 

-

Neville is prepared for something happening, but what he’s not prepared for is opening the door at eight in the morning to Credence, who is wearing a ratty almost-suit and holding out a leaflet that proclaims ‘burn the witches’.

Neville stares slowly at the leaflet, attempting to decipher if it has any deeper meaning beyond renouncing all witches and calling for their incineration, but he finds nothing, and as he looks back up at Credence, he’s surprised to find the other boy giggling softly, a noise that sets Neville’s stomach into a whirling overdrive, because Credence is just so  _ pretty  _ when he laughs, his face lit up with all the colours of a summer road trip.

Neville feels a strange want to kiss him, which is in definite opposition to the voice in Neville’s head demanding that Credence be turned out on his ear. Neville tells the voice to fuck off.

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” he says, taking the leaflet and starting as it crumples itself in the warmth of his hand, folding and crushing into a tiny ball. “I just…”

“It’s okay,” Credence says in that small voice of his, like a particularly amiable mouse. “We’re a little bit out there.”

Neville wonders if Newt will be able to tell that he’s thought this, that he feels this; does Newt know that Neville’s head is just a storm like this, or does he see clearly through to the eye? Maybe he’s wearing his windproofs - either way, Neville worries, and with the kind of reckless abandon that Pinetree seems to have instilled in his slightly overworked heart, he looks up and boldly asks Ozymandias, the question of questions:

“Can I kiss you?”

“Mm-hm.”

The response is mildly underwhelming; Neville was expecting fireworks or some kind of amateur dramatics, but Credence just smiles easily at him, and lets Neville hook his fingers at the back of Credence’s neck and kiss him in the kind of strange way that people who almost know how to kiss do, where they’re just about ready to let loose and  _ kiss _ \- but not quite, and Neville thinks he’s pretty fine with that. And with Credence; in fact, he’s  _ more  _ than fine with Credence, and more than fine with this town.

He thinks he actually might like this place; and he thinks he might really love the donuts, from the three he shares with Credence on his doorstep in the warmth of a Lionel Richie Sunday morning.

-

Neville actually starts to learn the layout of the town to the level that, when Newt invites him out to the canal after band practise (Neville has been welcomed with celebration as the school’s only double bass player, and, almost ritualistically, it had taken him three days to clean the layers of dust off), Neville finds his way there with relative ease, beaming with raw delight as he disembarks his bike (a moving present from his Gran, who decided he needed a way to get around besides his own two feet). Newt and Credence are already there; Newt is sitting on a small wooden platform floating on the water, trailing patterns with his bare feet and watching the water ripple where he moves, whilst Credence is sitting on Newt’s splayed checkerboard jacket, eyes red as he feebly sticks plasters to his raw hands.

“Neville!” Newt calls, waving cheerily. “Come over here. The water’s nice.”

Neville sheds his backpack by Credence, pausing only for a moment to ask if Credence is coming; the other boy just shakes his head and says he’ll be over later, so Neville settles onto the float with Newt, dipping his toes into the water with extreme caution only to find that Newt’s right and that the water is, surprisingly, an acceptable temperature; the float is a suntrap, and Newt is sprawled right in the heat of it, his freckled skin aglow.

“We didn’t get this kind of sun in England,” he says, sounding amused, as if there’s something hilarious about the weather; Neville’s sure that’s some kind of Britishism, so just nods like he knows. “It’s nice, if not a bit toasty.” Newt reaches into his pocket and produces a pair of large blue Aviator sunglasses that don’t suit him in the slightest, and Neville stifles a giggle, as does Newt as he leans back on the wood of the float, watching the clouds as they float by, lazy.

They sit like that for a long and comfortable moment before Newt half-turns his head to look at Neville. “You’re thinking very loudly right now, you know.”

“Am I?” Neville flushes. “What - what can you hear?”

“I’m trying not to listen. I don’t want to invade, you see, but it’s a little tricky not to hear you; it’s almost the equivalent of shouting. I can hear that you’re worried about Credence.” Newt sits up in a mildly terrifying gesture that dips the float, causing Neville a very small heart attack as his mind decides that he is about to drown. “He doesn’t have a very good home life. But he’s going to be okay. We’re working on it. My contribution is mostly just days out and donuts, but I’m trying.” Newt smiles, placing a hand over Neville’s; his hand is a little sweaty, and a part of Neville is repulsed at the same time another part is thrilled. “Am I that exciting?”

“Can you not read my mind?” Neville asks softly; it’s not so much that he feels  _ invaded _ , because he knows he’s already having his privacy invaded daily by whomever it is that tracks every keystroke and Google search and stares through his mobile phone camera - it’s that he thinks that his emotions are stupid and uncontrollable and he just doesn’t want to see the mess and tangle of thoughts that lie behind his forehead.

“Not really,” Newt says, apologetically, even with a gentle furrowing of his brows. “I usually have to make effort to hear, but… not with you. You’re turned up to eleven.”

“You probably understand me more than I do,” Neville laughs, leaning in slightly to Newt’s shoulder.

“Only a little,” Newt shrugs. “Enough to know that I think we feel the same way.”

And with that, he seems to decide that he’s said to much or hit his extrovert bandwidth limit and leans back again; still, Neville joins him, swallowing his terror as the platform shudders, dipping as he shifts (it takes him a moment to convince himself that there’s not something under the water deliberately trying to push him and the float upwards). Everything about town feels new and shiny and different, but it’s comfortable, easy - and Newt is so easy it feels like they’ve known each other for years, grinning as Credence arrives, flourishing Newt’s coat over his eyes.

-

Neville takes to the canal - not only does it quickly become his framework for figuring where things are, a welcome replacement from ‘the ugly statue’, but it’s one of the town’s centrepieces: it’s home to countless boats that serve as offices or cafés or pop-up stalls, all of which Neville visits in a touristy circuit, particularly taken by a pop-up art gallery characterised half by Liechtenstein-esque prints and half by Polaroids hung on a piece of string, a record player spinning  _ This Is The Story  _ in the background. Newt is fond of the floating music shop, selling guitars and ukuleles and banjos and mandolins; he tells Neville that his brother Theseus used to play in a band in high school, and Newt’s no shabby guitarist either, demonstrating his talent with a riff from  _ Scott Pilgrim  _ on a dark blue Fender (“Theseus taught me,” he says modestly, “I’m no good, really”).

Newt’s also an enthusiast of all places food-related, and they stop often to have a coffee and a cake, his treat. Neville wonders how he stays so thin, considering his deep affection for sweet treats; perhaps it’s all the walking and cycling - Newt seems to get around town, that’s for sure. Credence eats a little less, mostly just drinking hot chocolates despite the sweltering weather outside. Every now and then when they wander along the canal, one of their other friends joins them: Tina, for a trip to a board games café; Abernathy, on the hunt for a secondhand copy of  _ The Catcher In The Rye _ ; Theseus, back for the weekend from college with a wad of money from taking place in an experiment on campus. They go after school one Wednesday, and Jacob gives them a whole star-patterned bag of cookies to eat, crowded together on their little float: Newt, Neville, Credence, elbow to elbow, knee to knee.

Neville has never felt more comfortable in his skin, or more comfortable with two other people in his life; in another life, the life before he moved here, he’d be embarrassed at the idea of being caught dead with a boy with a bowl cut and a boy loudly and badly humming  _ You Can Call Me Al _ , but this is a life where he joins in, a life where he finds his hand drawn to the shaved hair at the back of Credence’s head and one where he thinks it’s okay to kiss boys when he wants to.

Not that he’s kissed Credence any more than that one time, mind you, but he’s pretty sure he could go for another one and it’d be fine.

“I heard that,” Newt laughs. Neville flushes, looking over as Newt tilts his head. “What about me? Would you - want to kiss me, too?”

It’s the first flash of insecurity that Neville has been privy to: Newt seems to be so secure in his ambling walk and dazed smile that Neville’s never even stopped to  _ think _ that there might be any insecurity there, any thought that wasn’t part of a happy daze. He’s not sure he likes it, this slightly fractured part of Newt beneath the surface; if he could, he would just put everybody back together, fix them with superglue or a hot glue gun, but he’s also found that he can’t quite do that - the only thing he  _ can _ fix with extreme glue is his shoe.

But he knows there’s something he can do now, and that something is leaning over and kissing Newt.

Credence reaches a hand over to pull Neville away, and smiles so brightly it’s like staring into the sun as their lips touch. “I like these afternoons,” he says - and most things he likes, he likes because they give him the chance to be away from his Ma and all those old thoughts; but this, this is something that blossoms with feeling in his chest, something that he thinks is more important than everything else, a hobby for the sake of enjoyment rather than just killing time.

Not that Neville and Newt are hobbies, he thinks. They’re full time jobs that make him love to go to work.

-

The rest of the summer passes in canal-walking bliss, and the fall in a snapshot of schoolwork and activities; the winter, then, is a time for change and new things: the town is different in the freezing cold with its residents packed like sardines under their layers of puffy jackets and thermals, the boat shops closing for the season as the canal freezes over, just a twinkle in the corner of Neville’s eye as he walks to school, all thoughts of his bicycle nearly stored away until it becomes a feasible mode of transport again.

He hears the occasional whisper of news and local paper article about disturbances on the canal - people seeing something moving below the wad of ice - but Neville grew up in a conspiracy county, and he writes them off. “It’s silly,” he says round the table, tucking into the cafeteria’s idea of a ‘Christmas menu’ (some sliced turkey in bad gravy with roast potatoes, and a Yule log with cream for dessert). “People are just seeing things. There’s definitely no Nessie here.”

“Well, there wouldn’t be, since we don’t have a Loch Ness,” Percival snorts, with raised eyebrow.

Neville flinches. “I just meant that - there’s no mythical creature, or dinosaur, or anything in the canal.”

Credence shifts, exchanging a short glance with Abernathy before gently pushing his bowl forward. “Here, Neville, you can have my dessert,” he says, as firmly as his timid demeanour will allow. “I got extra cream.” Neville tries to object, but Credence simply pushes the bowl further until Neville accepts it: he  _ does  _ love Yule log, after all.

“Thank you,” he says eventually; Credence smiles softly back at him.

“It’s Christmas,” he says.

-

Neville doesn’t spend a lot of time alone with Credence - Newt’s his boyfriend, too, after all - and it’s strangely refreshing when they agree to go Christmas shopping for Newt together. They have a lazy lunch at a fast food chain before embarking on what can only be described as an  _ odyssey _ : they don’t want to buy just anything for Newt, who is by no means just anyone, and haunt record shops and independent art stores and even stop off at a small pet store in their quest before deciding on buying him a pair of gecko cufflinks and a pendant with a tiny version of the  _ Hunky Dory  _ album cover on it. Neville even buys some cute gift bags for them at the arts and craft store, on Jacob’s recommendation.

“Do you think he’ll like them?” Neville asks, zipping them away into the security of his backpack.

“I think so,” Credence says with a slightly hearty nod, setting off again: they’re following the canal, walking beside it, and he watches the frozen-over surface with piqued interest. “We thought a lot about it.” He looks up to the sky, dark and twinkling: shopfronts are beginning to darken as the night falls, a curtain over the day. The moon yawns down at him, and Credence smiles slowly to himself as the ice over the canal begins to crack.

Neville stops, turning to watch as lines shatter their way across the surface before wrenching apart into a Moses ocean: and, to his starting shock, from the chasm of clear water bursts a lizard-like head of a creature blue as bruises that shrieks wildly as it shakes, its mane of Medusa tendrils trembling with its movement. He falls back, landing hard on his butt and staring wide-eyed:  _ fuck _ , he thinks, because from supernatural powers to screeching beasts he’s beginning to think that the conspiracy theorists weren’t so wrong after all, and guilt swallows in his stomach at the thought of his dismissal.

A gleeful whoop emanates from in the distance. “Here he is! What a beauty!”

“Isn’t he?”

“I think we should stop admiring him and get on with it!”

“Yeah, that’s what  _ you _ think, ’mione - but c’mon, let the old animal loonies admire the thing! They’ve been waiting half a bloody year for this.”

Credence helps Neville to his feet just as the voices arrive in his eyeline: Newt is at their beady-eyed head, clad in a thick blue coat and scarf and holding tightly to a beaten old suitcase. “I’m sorry we couldn’t tell you, Neville,” he says, beaming, “but you wouldn’t believe us. I just thought that it was a sight worth seeing.”

“What is it?” Neville asks, grabbing Newt’s arm as he stares; he wonders if his lunch has something in it, since the kitchens didn’t look  _ that  _ reputable.

“I’m not sure, but I think it might be related to the occamy. We’re going to capture it and study it. We’re part of an organisation.” Newt gestures to his companions - Neville recognises Ron Weasley, whom he’s met before, and Abernathy is standing holding several monitors, consulting them with the help of a girl with bushy hair and an intensely thoughtful stare. “And, well, if you’re going to be with us, then - Credence and I want to welcome you to our lives, fantastical beasts and all.”

Neville’s not sure what he thinks of this town, or his new life: but it’s new, it’s an experience, and it’s amazing.

And he nods.

“Righty-ho, then,” Newt says, and turns around. “Into the suitcase.”

Neville raises his eyebrows. He thinks he might be asleep, or dead, or on drugs, or all three at once if such a thing is possible.  “The - suitcase?”

Newt smiles. “Nothing’s impossible, Neville.”

-

Neville is only convinced that the entire incident wasn’t a dream or hallucination when him and Credence pop over to Newt’s house to exchange presents and the creature - or at least, its miniature - is nestled on a pillow at the bottom of the bed, squeaking curiously at them.

Life is strange, but he thinks he rather likes it.

“Is this place better or worse than conspiracy county?” Newt asks softly, giggling. They sit in a circle, on bean bags and pillows like they’re playing preteen truth or dare, but instead they pass round gifts: Newt’s jewelry,  _ The Perks of Being a Wallflower  _ and a new scarf for Credence (fiction beyond the Bible and his assigned reading is disallowed in his house, but Neville and Newt help him smuggle books in anyway; Credence is keen), a book on conspiracy theories for Neville as well as a small cactus to add to his growing collection of plants, big and small.

He leans forward to kiss Newt first, and as their lips touch, he realised that - strange as it may be, Newt and Credence and the canal and their powers and the creature that can’t stay one size - he loves it. All of it.

And he loves the people, most of all. If there were two people in the world he’d most want to go crazy with, it’s Newt and Credence.

So he will: he’ll follow that star, because this life is new, and it’s the life he thinks he loves most of all.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading this! I wasn't sure about putting it up but I figured I might as well. Please come speak to me @chrlieweasleys on Tumblr if you liked it!


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